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The academic literature on women’s entrepreneurship in the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) continues to increase, possibly due to the enormous potential of women’s entrepreneurship to promote social empowerment and economic growth in a country. This study aims to systematically review existing research on women’s entrepreneurship in the internationalization of SMEs and provide a robust understanding of academic developments in this field. This study also aims to identify and explore key thematic areas within the research field related to women’s entrepreneurship in SME internationalization.

This study selected 62 articles retrieved from the four databases (Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO and Google Scholar). Content analysis was conducted to identify key research issues and gaps, which were then mapped on cluster themes. VOSviewer was used to represent the research cluster themes visually.

This study identifies and discusses six research streams related to the concept of women’s entrepreneurship in SME internationalization: export behavior and gender in SMEs; entrepreneurship and country economic development; gender, innovation and performance in SME internationalization; women entrepreneurship in international business and management research; internationalization process of SMEs; and business experience and export experience. Some topics that emerged as potential for future research include personal and organizational dynamics, internationalization behavior, decision-making, adoption of strategies or technologies and orientation toward international markets.

This study offers valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders aiming to foster women’s entrepreneurship within the internationalization landscape of SMEs. The findings provide a roadmap for identifying underexplored areas in women’s entrepreneurship within SME internationalization, guiding future research initiatives.

This study aims to systematically review papers on women’s entrepreneurship in the internationalization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by examining the research profile (i.e. publication trends, publishers, domain and quality of journals, methodologies and units of analysis and regional classifications), internationalization entry modes and the theories underpinning, key variables using AMO framework (i.e. antecedents, mediators, moderators and outcomes) and suggestions for potential future studies.

This study used bibliometric analysis by selecting 62 relevant papers from 3,016 papers collected from the Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar and EBSCO databases. Content analysis was conducted to identify key research issues and gaps, which were then mapped on an AMO framework to address potential future research.

This study found that the number of papers published during the period 1994–September 2022 fluctuated, indicating an increasing trend of women’s entrepreneurship research in the internationalization of SMEs being published in various reputable journals by well-known publishers. This study also found several alternatives of internationalization entry modes, although export is still the most widely used alternative. Various theories that underlie this research include internationalization theory, resource-based theory, feminist theory and international entrepreneurship. This study proposes a future research framework on women’s entrepreneurship in the internationalization of SMEs: AMO.

This study contributes to the intersection of gender-focused international business and entrepreneurship domains. This study proposes a conceptual model of women’s entrepreneurship in internationalization of SMEs by mapping the antecedents, mediators/moderators and outcomes and offers promising opportunities for future research directions.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on women’s entrepreneurship and internationalization in order to build an understanding about future trends. There is increasing interest in the role of women in entrepreneurship yet little research has been conducted about the link to internationalization patterns.

The literature is reviewed based on a systematic analysis of the words women, female, gender and internationalization.

Three main schools of thought around women’s entrepreneurship and internationalization (philosophy, management and motivations) are then discussed. The analysis of literature and classification into main theories enables the building of new research around women’s entrepreneurship and internationalization.

There is a pipeline of women intending to become entrepreneurs so this paper helps to understand how women entrepreneurs influence internationalization patterns and how to help support women in their business endeavors.

The literature on international entrepreneurship offers two competing views on why new ventures internationalize: (a) the nature of the opportunity pulls them international or (b) the founder pushes the firm international. While these two internationalization drivers are not independent, they do represent unique causal mechanisms. Previously, the tools available to understand the entrepreneur’s disposition toward internationalization were limited. The present study uses the theoretical foundation of the international entrepreneurial orientation construct and from it develops and tests an attitudinally-based individual-level measure of disposition toward internationalization. To ensure the validity and reliability of the new measure, termed International Entrepreneurial Orientation Disposition, studies were conducted to: develop new scale items, examine their psychometric properties and construct validity, and demonstrate criterion validity. A strong measurement model is developed using structural equation modeling (CFI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.07), and the measure is shown to be useful as a predictor of perceived international venture attractiveness.

The current study aims to examine the role of international entrepreneurship and innovation in small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) internationalisation, also touching on the role of the firm size as a proxy of resources in the SME internationalisation process. The study seeks to look at these issues in the context of manufacturing firms, arguing that entrepreneurial SMEs pursuing international market entry undertake organisational innovation, which in turn enables such firms to achieve higher marketplace performance.

The paper was based on the development and administration of a self‐completed survey of 302 managers.

The results suggest that international SMEs differ from non‐international SMEs in terms of international entrepreneurship, organisational innovation intensity and firm size.

The cross‐sectional research design and the regional nature of the sampled firms may limit the generalisability of the findings. The manufacturing sectors that were studied provided an appropriate setting, although research in other industries is required.

The findings provide SME managers with a feasible path to internationalisation, in that firms striving towards internationalisation must undertake organisational innovation. Innovative firms are better equipped to exploit international market opportunities and perform better in such markets.

In spite of the central role assigned to innovation in a firm's competitive strategy, the literature that examines the role of innovation in SME internationalisation has been limited. Addressing this research gap the paper examines the role of international entrepreneurship and innovation in SME internationalisation.

This paper aims to analyze the role of management accounting in international entrepreneurship. Its role, thus far, has been a neglected topic in research on accounting and international entrepreneurship, although some quantitative findings indicate the positive influence of management accounting on internationalization capability.

This paper is based on a multiple case study of Austrian firms and draws on the resource-based view of the firm as well as effectuation/causation logics. Data for this study were collected via semi-structured interviews, press reports, company chronicles, organizational brochures and websites of the analyzed case firms.

The paper finds that management accounting may indeed serve as a key capability for international entrepreneurship. However, reliance on this capability seems to be contingent on the phase of international entrepreneurship and pathway and mode of internationalization.

The findings add to the accounting literature by showing that the phase as well as the mode and pathway of international entrepreneurship may serve as contingency factors for management accounting, which have been overlooked in the literature. At the same time, they also contribute to the international entrepreneurship literature by offering an initial view on the neglected capability of management accounting.

This is the first study to analyze the role of management accounting in international entrepreneurship.

This chapter is aimed at developing a conceptual framework for the internationalization process of social business (SB). The study has been conducted by reviewing the literature on social entrepreneurship, SB, and internationalization of small business. The study indicated that the internationalization decision for SB is taken by the motivation to create a social impact in the target foreign location. Based on the analyses and related literature, the entrepreneur-specific, firm-specific, and context-specific factors affecting the internationalization decision of social entrepreneurs are presented. As part of the framework, the chapter explains opportunity identification and the internationalization implementation phases for SBs. One of the key contributions of the chapter is the depiction of an internationalization framework for SB, which is an innovative addition to social entrepreneurship literature. The framework developed here could help social entrepreneurs to take decisions for scaling their businesses internationally.

This paper aims to critically review the ownership, location and internalization (OLI) model and the Uppsala internationalization process (UIP) framework. We suggest that the inclusion of concepts such as corporate entrepreneurship, host country institutions and regulatory focus in an integrated framework helps to explain firm internationalization.

This paper is based on a review of the literature on the OLI and UIP models. In addition, it presents a conceptual model that encompasses corporate entrepreneurship, regulatory focus and institutions.

The OLI and the UIP models fail to include corporate entrepreneurship and managerial psychology in their analyses. We suggest that regulatory focus theory unifies the managerial strategic choice between position logic and opportunity logic. In addition, host country institutions affect this managerial choice with regard to internationalization.

Regulatory focus theory originates from managerial psychology. The model is, therefore, relevant for managers, and it shows how the outcomes and processes of corporate entrepreneurial activity should manifest themselves in managerial decision-making related to further internationalization. The strength of host country institutions also affects such decision-making.

This paper is the first to present the concept of regulatory focus in relation to firm internationalization. In addition, it shows that most entrepreneurship-related models of internationalization focus on international entrepreneurship and start-up firms. In contrast, this paper focuses on corporate entrepreneurship and the internationalization of established firms.

Today, newly founded businesses are inevitably driven to start in a digital form from day 1. Moreover, most existing businesses conceive digitalization as an important part of their strategic orientation by developing and improving their digital assets and digitalizing their processes. By taking account of this development, this chapter investigates how entrepreneurial orientation (EO) affects a small firm’s proclivity to both digitization and internationalization and their performance that comes from it. Internationalization has been a key topic for many small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) over the past decades. As digitization is currently taking over the helm from internationalization as the most pressing topic affecting business, we carried out research among SMEs to understand the interplay of these factors influencing business performance. The focus of the research was on the precursory factors inducing firm performance as well as on their interrelationships. Using a sample of 357 SMEs, EO is found to be significantly closely associated with an SME’s degree of digitization as well as with its overall performance. In contrast, EO does not affect the SME’s level of internationalization. This result is surprising considering that proactive and risk-taking firms tend to be more inclined to enter foreign and distant markets.